As is known, many pourable food products, such as fruit juice, UHT (ultra-high-temperature treated) milk, wine, tomato sauce, etc., are sold in packages made from sterilized packaging material on fully automatic packaging machines. The packaging material may, for example, be web-fed and folded and sealed longitudinally to form a continuous vertical tube. The tube is then filled with the sterilized or sterile-processed food product, and is sealed and cut along equally spaced cross sections to form pillow packs, which are then folded mechanically to form the finished, e.g. parallelepiped-shaped, packages.
Instead of being formed into a continuous tube, the packaging material may be cut into blanks, which are formed into the finished packages on forming spindles, and the packages then filled with the food product and sealed.
Once the packages are formed, an opening device, by which to pour out the food product, is applied to a top wall of each package. The opening devices are closable to protect the food product from contact with external agents, and, in their most commonly marketed form, comprise an annular portion defining a pour opening and fixed about a removable or pierceable portion of the top wall; and a cap hinged to the annular portion and which is removable to open the package.
Opening devices of the above type are produced in the form of plastic sheets defining a matrix of opening devices, i.e. a number of parallel rows of opening devices joined integrally by break-off connecting tabs by which to separate the opening devices.
A need is felt for a method of separating the opening devices in such a way as to permit orderly, continuous, efficient, fast supply of the individual opening devices to a follow-up station where they are applied to the top walls of the respective packages.
In particular, a need is felt to separate the opening devices using relatively fast-moving parts involving a relatively small amount of travel, and/or using a relatively small number of parts and/or parts having a bulk as small as possible.